To A Voice That Had Been Lost.[1]

Vane, quid affectas faciem mihi ponere, pictor? Aëris et lingua sum filia; Et, si vis similem pingere, pinge sonum.—AUSONIUS.

Once more, Enchantress of the soul, Once more we hail thy soft controul. —Yet whither, whither did’st thou fly? To what bright region of the sky? Say, in what distant star to dwell? (Of other worlds thou seemst to tell) Or trembling, fluttering here below, Resolv’d and unresolv’d to go, In secret didst thou still impart Thy raptures to the Pure in heart? Perhaps to many a desert shore, Thee, in his rage, the Tempest bore; Thy broken murmurs swept along, Mid Echoes yet untun’d by song; Arrested in the realms of Frost, Or in the wilds of Ether lost. Far happier thou! ’twas thine to soar, Careering on the winged wind. Thy triumphs who shall dare explore? Suns and their systems left behind. No tract of space, no distant star, No shock of elements at war, Did thee detain. Thy wing of fire Bore thee amidst the Cherub-choir; And there awhile to thee ’twas giv’n Once more that Voice belov’d to join, Which taught thee first a flight divine, And nurs’d thy infant years with many a strain from Heav’n!

In the winter of 1805.

The late Mrs. Sheridan’s.

FROM A GREEK EPIGRAM.

While on the cliff with calm delight she kneels, And the blue vales a thousand joys recall, See, to the last, last verge her infant steals! O fly—yet stir not, speak not, lest it fall. Far better taught, she lays her bosom bare, And the fond boy springs back to nestle there.

TO THE FRAGMENT OF A STATUE OF HERCULES, COMMONLY CALLED THE TORSO.

And dost thou still, thou mass of breathing stone, (Thy giant limbs to night and chaos hurl’d) Still sit as on the fragment of a world; Surviving all, majestic and alone? What tho’ the Spirits of the North, that swept Rome from the earth, when in her pomp she slept, Smote thee with fury, and thy headless trunk Deep in the dust mid tower and temple sunk; Soon to subdue mankind ’twas thine to rise. Still, still unquell’d thy glorious energies! Aspiring minds, with thee conversing, caught Bright revelations of the Good they sought; By thee that long-lost spell in secret given, To draw down Gods, and lift the soul to Heav’n!

In the gardens of the Vatican, where it was placed by Julius II, it was long the favourite study of those great men, to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Caracci.

Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an antient epigram on the Gnidian Venus. Analecta Vet. Poetarum, III. 200.